Curious Creature Encounter #13-
A Most Peculiar Encounter in the Bog of Neshiyya
By Professor Eldrin Nightshade
The things one endures in the pursuit of alchemical excellence! My recent expedition to the Bog of Neshiyya, undertaken to procure a particularly elusive bog-root vital for my "Cure Concoction" (a formula, I assure you, of unparalleled efficacy), was… enlightening. And by "enlightening," I mean "utterly bewildering and slightly damp."
The bog, as the name suggests, is a morass of perplexing terrain. One moment, you're convinced you're on solid ground; the next, you're up to your knees in something that smells suspiciously like week-old toadstools and existential dread. But I digress.
It was amidst this olfactory assault that I encountered the creature.
I had paused to consult my notes (written, naturally, on waterproof parchment, a lesson learned from a previous incident involving a rather enthusiastic mudskipper and a very important diagram), when I heard a… plorp.
Not a plop, mind you, the common sound of bog-inhabiting fauna. No, this was a plorp. Distinctly wetter, somehow… juicier.
I peered cautiously into the gloom, my spectacles perched precariously on my nose. And there it was.
The Bog Blobble.
Imagine, if you will, a sentient… well, blob. A large, gelatinous mass of iridescent green, pulsating gently, with two rather large, googly eyes that seemed to regard me with an unsettling mixture of curiosity and mild indigestion. It made the plorp sound intermittently.
Now, I've encountered my share of unusual creatures in my travels. Fire-breathing newts, self-folding flora, the occasional grumpy gnome. But the Bog Blobble… it defied categorization. It was as if a particularly ambitious puddle had decided to become a life form.
Its method of locomotion, I observed, was less "locomotion" and more a series of… wobbles. It would wobble in a general direction, leaving a glistening trail of… something… in its wake. I confess, I was momentarily mesmerized. I even considered taking a sample, but the googly eyes gave me pause.
The most baffling part? It appeared to be… communicating.
The plorp sounds, I eventually deduced, were a rudimentary language. After several minutes of intense observation (and a near-fatal misstep into a particularly viscous patch of quicksand), I managed to translate.
"More… plorp… bubbles?" it seemed to be saying.
"Bubbles?" I inquired, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
Plorp plorp. (Affirmative, I believe.)
It wanted bubbles.
As it happened, I had a vial of "Effervescence Essence" in my satchel, a recent experiment gone slightly awry (it was supposed to make tea float; it made it explode). On a whim, I uncorked it and poured a small amount into a nearby puddle.
The Blobble reacted with what I can only describe as… glee. It wobbled towards the puddle, its googly eyes widening, and began to… slurp the bubbles with a series of delighted plorps.
I watched this spectacle for a good ten minutes, a seasoned alchemist observing a sentient blob consume enchanted bubbles in a bog. It was, without a doubt, the most surreal Tuesday afternoon of my life.
Eventually, having acquired my bog-root (thankfully, it was located some distance from the Blobble and its bubbly repast), I departed, leaving the Blobble to its… plorping.
The things one encounters... I shudder to think what I'll find on my next expedition. Only time, and the Bog of Neshiyya, will tell.
